


The Treehouse

by LittleDidTheyKnow



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Karen Page's Backstory, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-10 16:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDidTheyKnow/pseuds/LittleDidTheyKnow
Summary: This is a small excerpt from a fic that I'm writing about Karen's past. It was originally posted on Tumblr.Karen and Matt aren’t dating (yet) and they go back to her childhood home to look into something sketchy with her family. She thinks he’s taking a nap in her bedroom and she goes into her treehouse after getting into a fight with her mother.





	The Treehouse

**Author's Note:**

> I’m posting this because I've been feeling pretty restless with the many multi-fics I’m writing right now. This story isn’t going to see the light of day for at least four months (if ever) and I just wanted to post it for happiness. 

 

Karen heard a knock on the floor and wondered who was on the other side. Certainly not her mother- she had never entered Kevin and Karen’s wooden home away from home. She had always assumed it was because Penelope Page wouldn’t be caught dead climbing a tree, coupled with the fact that her 1950′s-looking Stepford dresses might get wrinkled if she had to sit on the floor. That was one of the many benefits of having a treehouse. Most of the other perks involved her brother, which made it all the more painful to spend time in her childhood hideaway, but she could take that pain. It never really left her anyway. 

She lifted the hatch and saw her favorite pair of brown eyes. “What’s the password?” she said in her best secretive voice.

He stroked his chin as he contemplated the answer. “ _I love Matt Murdock_?”

“Nice try, buddy. But boys are stupid and I don’t even know who that is.”

“Damn,” he chuckled as she gasped sarcastically at his bad language. “Could you ignore my lack of knowledge of the secret password just this once if I had something to offer? Like snacks?”

“I’m listening,” she said as if she was meditating on his answer. He smiled like he was completely aware that he had found an in. Matt Murdock knew the way to her heart, and the path was littered with salt and sugar. He pulled two small yellow packages from his pocket and held them out to her like they were gold.

Karen’s eyes lit up. “Ok, Murdock, you can come up.  _Just this once_.”

He smiled, deftly tossing them over her head and climbing the remaining steps. She scooped up the packages and went back to her corner, patting the space next to her and ripping one of them open. “Where did you find these?”

“They were shoved at the back of your second desk drawer. I hope you don’t mind. I woke up hungry and I could smell them from your bed.”

“I was going to say, my mother never let us have Gushers. But that means that I bought them, so they must be at least….  _six_ years old?”

He laughed. “Oh, they’re well past the expiration date. But these super-senses tell me that they’re still good. Thank God for processed sugar.”

That was all she needed to dive into her package, pulling out a soft green hexagon that was filled red liquid and popping it into her mouth. “Mmmm. Just as good as I remembered.”

He opened his package and ate one, giggling as the sourness spread over his tongue. “We never had these at the orphanage, and before that, name brands were few and far between in the Murdock household.”

Karen nodded. “Penelope was always of the mindset that sugar led to fat, and God forbid her daughter gain a pound from anything that made her happy.” She knew she was being pretty harsh with her mother, but after their fight, she didn’t care. 

Matt shook his head. He never had to worry about his weight as a kid, but if he was being honest, a full meal was a little hard to come by. He couldn’t imagine growing up in the environment his friend had lived in, though. The moment he walked into the Page household, he felt stifled. Her description of the woman he’d just met definitely didn’t sound like an exaggeration. 

“So, Ms. Page. Now that you have the wisdom of your years, what advice would you give little Karen Page?

“Hmmm… that’s a good question.” She licked her lips and sank back into the crook of Matt’s arm, leaning her head on his shoulder as he sank further into her makeshift pillow couch. He popped another Gusher into his mouth and smiled at the new flavor. “I don’t think any amount of preparation would help me with my last few years here, so I think I’d try to assuage her fears about things she was actually worried about.”

Matt smiled. “Makes sense.”

“I’d probably tell her that bra shopping gets  _so much better_ when your mother isn’t judging you for being slutty because you like a little lace.”

She looked up at him and saw his eyes grow wide as she gave him that tidbit of information. “Believe me, you had it much better growing up as the opposite gender. I think I spent 90 percent of my teen years feeling completely mortified. I asked Kevin if he felt the same once and his look said it all.”

He nodded as she continued. “I’d probably tell her that most of the men I come in contact with in my adult years are much more handsome and far more interesting than Bobby Dresden. But that bar was pretty low.”’ She cringed as she said the name of her former crush. Every time she remembered the moments she wasted on that 16-year-old little shit, a familiar scowl returned to her face.

“Any in particular?” he flashed a smile at her and she felt herself cuddle against him without meaning to. It was enough of a move to end his cockiness immediately, and he realized his breaths were more measured as he wondered how much fruit snacks gave one bad breath. 

“I can think of at least one,” she flirted. “Hmmm… I think I’d tell her that sex isn’t a bad thing and she’ll actually grow to like it. Everything I learned from my mother was basically a scare tactic that was passed down from her mother before her. That side of the family is especially repressed.”

“I never thought I’d be talking about Karen Page’s sex life in her childhood treehouse, but this trip has already revealed a wealth of information I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams. Tell me more about these lacy bras that are lining your drawers back in New York,  _Ms. Page.”_

She felt the blood rush to her cheeks and shook her head quickly. “Not a chance, Murdock!” She felt like she was fourteen years old again, coming to the realization that boys were interested in flirting with her and responding with straight nerves instead of confidence. The fact that she was already cuddling with him didn’t even register. 

“I had to try.” He gave her a sideways smile and rubbed her shoulder. “Is that everything?”

“I think the final piece of advice would be… Don’t let the boys make fun of you for loving Bonne Bell lip gloss.” She chuckled at how superficial it sounded. “Enjoying the little things is what got me through some of my most difficult moments…” 

She thought about the moment at Kevin’s funeral when she found her strawberry lipgloss in the pocket of her black sweater. The last time she’d worn it had been at her favorite grandfather’s funeral just years before. She and Kevin had passed it between the two of them at the reception, putting it onto their lips and licking it off like it was their last meal. She never knew why pâté and caviar were the only foods offered at her parent’s shindigs, but she thought they were disgusting and so did Kevin. She had burst into tears the moment she found the little tube, distracting the minister as he was describing the tragedy of a child gone too soon, and garnering the worst glare she had ever received from her mother. 

That was the moment she decided she was going to leave Fagan Corners and never come back. But somehow here she was she was. In the town that filled her with shame and painful memories. The town that had a grip on her heart and threatened to remind her over and over of that which she couldn’t endure.

At least she had Matt. 

He could sense her shift in demeanor and tried his best to bring her back to a happy subject. “You mean those artificially flavored chapsticks?”

“Yeah. I should have known you’d be a snob.  _Artificially flavored,_ ” she mocked.

“Hey, I’m not knocking them!” he justified. “I’m fairly positive my first kiss was made more enjoyable for the fact that her lips tasted like strawberry.”

Karen giggled. “That’s pretty damn classic if I say so myself. Strawberry was always the best flavor.”

“It didn’t taste much like real strawberries, but it was definitely memorable.”

“So how did little Matt Murdock’s first kiss go?”

“That was less memorable. Her name was Caroline Carter, and I liked her up until that moment. I was ten and it was at recess…” his brain took him back to the smell of tire swings and bark dust as he remembered the time he usually spent getting ahead of the class with whatever subject he needed practice with. “I was kind of a loner back then, and her friends definitely dared her to do it. None of the kids knew that I could hear from that far away.” He said wistfully. “Anyway, she put some of that stuff on her lips and tapped me on the shoulder. It lasted a whole two seconds and then she shouted, ‘they dared me to do it, Matt!’ The next thing I knew, she was embarrassed and running away from me. Her friends thought it was pretty funny.”

Karen could sense his sadness as he shrugged. “Wait, you think that she did it—”

“Because she _had to_? Yeah.”

She laughed lovingly under her breath, which caught him off guard. “Oh Murdock, you don’t know girls at all. That was _not_ a pity kiss.”

“How do you know? Have you been having secret conversations with my grade school classmates?”

“No, but I  _was_  a little girl once. Here’s how I know she wanted to do it. First off, grade school girls aren’t mean to their friends – that sort of thing comes out around middle school– and daring someone to kiss a boy in order to embarrass them is the last thing they’d care about–”

“Well, they definitely dared her to–”

“Because they knew she _liked you,_ Matt. They were doing her a solid because she  _wanted_  to kiss you.” He tilted his head as he thought about the likelihood of that being true. She continued. “You’re _sure_ she put on the lipgloss  _right before_ kissing you?”

“Yeah, I distinctly remember hearing her do that.” He could hear the clicking of the top and the way his hands shook as she walked over to him while rubbing her lips together.

“Because she wanted it to be good for  _you_ , Matt. She definitely didn’t do it for her. And last but not least, she wasn’t embarrassed about having to kiss you, she was nervous. Because she  _liked_  you. And her friends were probably giggling because they were happy for her. And because they were little girls.”

“Really?  _You’re sure?_ ”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Did you talk to her again?”

“Not really. I kind of kept my distance after that. I didn’t think she actually liked me.”

“Wow, Matt, that’s pretty depressing. You really think people didn’t like you when you were a kid?”

“I was always treated differently,” he said sadly. “First I was the kid who was blinded in an accident and then my dad was killed… I didn’t have a lot of friends.”

Karen’s eyes filled with tears at her friend’s confession. “I’m so sorry, Matt. It sounds like you missed out on a childhood.”

He shrugged. There wasn’t much he could say about that. It was definitely true.

She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him into a hug as she looked up at him and smiled. 

“I would have loved to have been your friend.”


End file.
